Good. There needs to be a fast recruitment of progressive, late Gen X/Millennial candidates for lower officesâschool boards, city councils, and state legislatures. When weâre talking about Presidential candidates like geriocrats Sanders, Warren, and Biden, and fauxgressives Booker and Cuomo, we have a problem.
However much we may need to adequately support state party operations in the near term, the long-term goal should be to take all power from the states. The first target, when we get the federal legislative trifecta back, should be elections. We should pass pre-empting federal law to make elections subject completely to federal control. This is an important enough issue that the court should be packed, or election law removed from SCOTUS jurisdiction, if SCOTUS blocks this legislation.
Once federal pre-emption controlling elections is in place, federalizing away the rest of the power still left to the states will be easy. Under a regime of free and fair and ungerrymandered elections, the other side will struggle to win even one leg of the trifecta, and will never regain the majorities needed to undo our work, not until and unless it reforms itself to a state of post-insanity.
If the DNC wernât to busy looking for corporate whores to support then maybe we would have a chance to get those govenorships those state senate seats and win electionsâŚ
I will admit to knowing nothing about the organizational aspects of this. But it seems to me that the DNC should be about messaging for the party overall, coordinating that messaging, and raising funds that can be shared.
The state and local parties should be making themselves known and looking for those local candidates and opportunities to build from the ground up.
A fundamental issue seems to be the sense that democratic and progressive candidates have no ties to their communities and no understanding of the locals. I donât think you can effectively fight that by relying on ânational.â Can you?
The GOTP wants to control 34 states, with both Gov and state legislatures belonging to hem. Once they get the 34 they can and will call for a Constitutional Convention that bypasses Congress. That is what they are looking for. Dems think they want to make Presidential election direct rather than they way it is today. That amendment will never pass as the small rural states, fly over country, would lose what little sway they have on the presidential election
GOTP-31 governors and 25 state Legislatures. Remember 34 is the goal and some teahadists like Texas Gov Abott are pushing hard to get a convention this year.
They need just 3 more
Gov, but 9 more GOTP majority Legislatures.
Of course they could screw up and make the call early, except that is not being politically intelligent. The 34 states needed should call for a CC only if the numbers are all on their side. Smart people would call for the CC only if the had everything set up for a victory. Because the Teahadists want to put a limit on congress, that congress will be fighting it every step of the way.
As much as I love President Obama and thinks he did a great job, I do blame him and Rahm Emanuel for the mess the DNC is in. Howard Dean had a winning plan in mind with his 50 state strategy, putting up candidates even when they had very little chance of winning but these 2 came along and gutted that, think of where we would be today if they had just left that lone.
Dang. Theyâve posted this AP article 4xâs at TPM (under the News section scroll-down menu) as of this writing. Wonder if someone accidentally hit the âpostâ button with a little too much enthusiasmâŚSeems odd.
All comments on the article go to one place however.
The state and local parties should be making themselves known and looking for those local candidates and opportunities to build from the ground up.
^^THIS^^.
There are actually two different issues going on here: 1. Funding
2. Recruitment. Right now, it sounds as if the states are blaming DC for their loss and some of that is justified. But,âŚitâs THE STATES THEMSELVES who need to get their sh*t together and then the money comes in from that.
The DNC does NOT recruit candidates. How many damn times do I need to repeat this??? They get involved if recruitment intersects with fundraising. If a state Democratic Party is shambolic, sending them cash isnât gonna make much difference. The state needs to show that theyâve got a real plan to create a successful state Party apparatus.
And the âprogressiveâ wing howled and frothed when the âfifty state strategyâ elected the much maligned âBlue Dogsâ (donât get me wrong they deserved to be maligned) that they stayed home and handed the 2012 congressional elections over to Republicans⌠sound familiar?
Excuse me if I get tired of people holding up the âfifty state strategyâ as some sort of gold standard when just 6 years ago it was being called the biggest mistake the DNC ever adopted.
i hope everyone is listeningâŚthe time for change is nowâŚif you want to organize and attract the youth and the diversity that heavily leans left/progressive in the country.
business as usual just wont cut itâŚthe days of low energy been there forever place holders has got to change.
the usual suspectsâŚthat enabled 1000 losses across the country have got to go.
we donât want foreign agents and billionaires influencing the DNC chair and making demands in line ONLY with their SINGLE interest!
we need a united democratic party in the senate to resist EVERYTHING the fuhrer attemptsâŚwe donât need chuckie praising the fuhrers asset stealing and caving in general to enrich their owners âŚat the expense of the working class.
sign petitionsâŚsend emails âŚtell them NO CASH! ,no giving in!!
To me, this is why the position as head of the DNC cannot, cannot, CANNOT, be a part time job filled by a hack. We need a serious strategist with good contacts to make a boatload of money to support operations in all 50 States. This is crucial to combat the earlier comment about GOTP holding 34 States with an eye toward re-writing the Constitution. We donât have time for posturing and half-a$$ed activity. This needs to get done as quickly as possible and as thoroughly as possible with the best, strongest and most credible leadership we can muster.
Interesting ideas, but I suspect both would require a Constitutional amendment. The second would certainly require one â Marbury v. Madison established that the SCOTUS has the duty to examine laws to determine whether they conform to the Constitution. That would include any law federalizing elections.
I agree itâs something we ought to do, but we need to be careful in doing it.
Excuse me but the DNC and its branches have been recruiting republicrat candinates across the country at least since rahmâs destructive tenure.
Where ever a progressive dared to raise their head with local support the national party, and its branches ( DSCC - Senate, DCCC- House) would parachute in with money and try to find a republican they could cloak with the democratic title while appealling to their chosen candinates greed for money and power and prop them up and run them in the primary. Historically for disastrous results. Both in picking losing candinates, people will always vote for a real thuglican then for a pretend democratic ( who really is a thuglican), and if by some off chance they do win they then spend their time in office subverting and betraying a democratic agenda while blocking the oppurtunity for a local grassroots candinate to gain the office.
Look at florida where the slate of democratic candinates picked and supported, even in primaryâs, included at least 2 recent turncoats. probably more but do not have time or inclination to research such a depressing subject.
Deanâs 50 state project was a success. The poobahâs of the democratics hated it because instead of enriching DNC washington hacks with oversized payments for âconsultanciesâ and jobs he paid for people in the field who actually worked versus just working the cocktail party circuit to engage in further self promotion.
Suggestions.
- Purge all of rahmâs disciples from the dnc and associated organizations.
- Instead of 1 overpaid hack who has a record of losing ( i.e. Bob Scrum) pay for 5 or more people in the states.
- No more corporate lobbyistâs. In fact support a non compete clause that would ban any work for corporations, or reactionaries ( R party, Heritage etc) for 5 years after last involvement with a D campaign.
Look to effectiveness rather then publicity and just fundraisers for working staff. Fund raisers are the waste disposal engineers of politics. Necessary but should never be allowed to affect policy in any way. They must listen to what they are told, get the money and be quiet when their opinions are needed they will be assigned to them.
The DNC, with DW-S in charge, made Clinton their candidate more than a year before she "decided " to run. The super delegates were all in for Clinton again, long before she declared. Just like the old smoke filled room days, except this time the DNC ignored all the states and the down ballot races. Thinking that Clinton win means the down ballot people also win.
1-the voters were not really given a choice, the DNC decided who was going to win. Sanders was right.
So was Trump, in a way. The fix was in to make Clinton the candidate months before she declared.
2- the big money was never available to any candidate as Clinton already had a line on all of it
3-I always thought that Clintons had Dean removed from his DNCpost and replaced with someone who would turn everything over to Clinton. The candidate I really liked, was never far left but was pragmatic and had, as a Senator, proved he could work with republicans, he quickly understood that the DNC had already paved the way forClinton and all the down ballot candidates were totally on their own.
I did not like what Clinton did, do not like the way both operate and am glad she is gone
The Democrats need new people, Podesta proved that not growing up with high tech makes every account you have online very easy to hack because we old farts do not have the innate understanding of computers that the millennials have, besides, everyone on Clintonâs team and Clinton herself were in total denial of what was going on. Granted, none of the smart guys, including 538 also didnât appear to have a clue. That had to be the very worst job by everyone, except Trumpâs guys who discovered that everyone was missing the people in fly over country. I think this massive miscalculation by everyone gave them all a needed slap upside the head by reality, as for the voters, I think that Trumps victory might just make the registered voters who A-stayed home because Clinton was winning by 10% or B-stayed home due to hubris because their guy did not win, so said to hell with the election, forgetting all about the down ballot people.
I hope that in 2 years the vast majority (7 out of 10) get up off their dead asses, and VOTE goddamnit
+10000000000
âI love President Obama, but he and his administration allowed for the deterioration, the terrible deterioration, of the state parties over the last eight years,â said Mark Brewer, who led the Michigan Democratic Party for 18 years.
Dear Mr. Mark Brewer, itâs YOUR JOB to protect the state party of Michigan, not President Obama. And lets take a look at Michigan, which voted for Trump this year:
Governor - GOP
House - 9 GOP to 5 Dem
Senate - 2 Dem
6 years ago there was a Dem governor and 2 fewer GOP House reps. Seems Mark Brewer should spend less time blaming others for his situation and more time looking inward and trying to solve the problems heâs left languish in his own state.
Yes, the DNC needs some attention, but the state partyâs themselves need to stop with the blaming and start fixing their own âhouseâ as well.
Art III, sec 2, para 3 gives Congress the power to limit SCOTUS jurisdiction. Iâm not aware that itâs ever been used, but there it is, waiting to be used.
The document also makes Congress the final judge of all federal elections. Not only does this make getting the courts out of federal elections a particularly natural jurisdictional limit, this provision is also why the VRA, and, in fact, all federal election law, is constitutional. What do you think the Constitution reserves to the states in the conduct of federal elections? What could federal law not require the states to do in their conduct of federal elections, for the results to be safe from rejection when Congress sits as the final judge of those federal elections?
I believe that although Rs might need only 34 states (2/3) to call a Constitutional Convention, but they would still need 38 states (3/4) to ratify any amendment that came out of an âArticle Vâ convention.
Obamabots! Emoprogs! Congrats for being the first on this thread to sow discord among Democrats.